Because the large amount of related work and limited personnel, we have no enough time to upload all the models we have made to the site. So, even you have not find the guitar you want on the site, please do not hesitate to email us, it may already have been made before and we might have HD photo for you. Question asked, question answered ! Just ask !

Before the cooperation between ESP and Hetfield, Hetfield’s explorer style guitars belonged to Navigator band. In the late 1980s, ESP made many explorer guitars for Hetfield, including many famous guitars as raised middle finger inlayed "EET FUK" explorer, dots inlayed explorer bearing words " A Year and A Half In the Life of Metallica; pt. 1". These guitars were called EX at the beginning and later called MX-220ii.

MX-220II is a little shorter than the length (from the strap button at bottom to the tip of the headstock), the angular is smoother a little, the distance between the toggle a switch to the knob is a little nearer than the current explorer guitars. And it has a unique truss rod cover which is parallel to the nut and has two screws. The structure of this guitar concerning the conjunction of the body and the neck is set-in.

The further adjustment to MX-220II is using a metal plate with 4 screws to fix the jacks. The truss rod cover still has 2 screws, but is not parallel to nut any more. No change is made for the rest parts.

Later, in the evolution of the MX-220II, the ESP changed the structure back to bolt-on structure.

The following MX-220II is very similar to Hetfield’s first explorer. This guitar is owned by EXPCustom with old fashioned body shape and no serial number. It’s said that there is no serial number and round trademark on the headstock back of the MX-220II guitar.

Presumably, the shape of the mx-220II is done in accordance with the 1958 explorer

The figure above is a comparison between a 1958 explorer (red line) and a 1976 explorer (black line)

ESP MX 250

Later on, the new design was named ESP MX 250 (later called MX-II, 250 means the price). The ESP MX 250 is a little longer than MX-220II, more pointed at the tip. In early 1990s, ESP adopted parallel round jacks. And in this edition, the pickups switch is a little farther away from the volume control and pickups.

ESP MX 250 was released in Japan, mahogany neck, ebony fingerboard, mahogany body, poly finish, EMG 81 pickups, and black dots inlays. No matter what color you want, they are always expensive. You can ask for special tuners and other optional parameters, and you can customize this guitar in USA, but they are known as "EXP custom" because the "MX" is specified for other models. They have bell-shaped truss rod cover which is fixed with one screw, behind the headstock there is the serial number. ESP batch changed the shape of the truss rod cover in 1955.

The picture below is an EXP Custom made 2003 ESP MX 250 edition.

The ESP MX 250 explorer released in U.S. are all EXP models which have two styles, ESP and LTD. EXP is of ESP MX 250 body, bolt-on neck, the ESP (ESP EXP) edition is characterized by rosewood fingerboard, maple neck, mahogany body; the LTD edition (LTD EXP-200) is also of maple neck and rosewood fingerboard. It’s said that the ESP MX 250 guitar body used different materials in different ages, alder used in the early years, and later turned into mahogany. The fretboard inlays also changed, there were two dots at the 12th fret of the early LTD edition but changed into a square (inscribed with LTD) in later versions.

The following picture is an old style LTD EXP-200 and ESP MX 250

In LTD series, there is a model named EXP-300, which has a neck through structure, floyd rose special Bridge and two EMG 81 pickups

In 2000, ESP opened a factory in Korea and produced LTD MX-130 which is much like ESP MX 250. And the interesting thing is there is no serial number. These products were sold only in Japan. Like ESP MX 250, they have two EMG81 pickups, neck through structure and black finish. These guitars occasionally can be found on Ebay but were discontinued in 2003.

Special Series

The First EX/MX-220II custom inlays series is 1989s "EET FUK", which was issued with a small quantity. The 5th fret is a little small and there is no step on the neck. Obviously, Hetfield immediately discovered this problem, so the production line had to be shut down. It is said that the quantity is less than 30. Some ESP MX 250 body used this kind of inlays too.

The special ESP MX 250 like "Man to Wolf” is called Japan’s ESP special interesting group, which means that you should bid a high prices to buy them.

Elk Skull ESP MX 250 was also produced in the period from late 1990s to 2003 in custom series; they were customized in the custom shop in Japan.

That’s all for these at least 10 guitars above. We brought together ESP MX 250 data and the drawings and studied, which really took us lots of efforts. Finally we completed it. All features have been accurately achieved for each ESP MX 250 guitar.If you have any questions, you can consult us. Because of the bulk replication, the inventory is limited. If you are interested in this ESP MX 250, please contact usimmediately!